Comment by TranquilMarmot | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TranquilMarmot | Hacker News Reader

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From what I understand of icon design, the goal is to make something that's instantly recognizable when glanced over. Your mind shouldn't have to interpret colors, light sources, shading, depth, etc. just to recognize a brand/app's icon. The Twitter and Apple icons are instantly recognizable no matter how small they are or how fast you glance over them. Facebook and Google have their icons as just letters with one specific color and typeface, and when you see that color + typeface together anywhere you instantly recognize what brand it is for.

Flat icons may not take as much effort to make (which is debatable... in some cases, they take even more thought to create since you have to think about every little line and curve) but they do get their point across a lot faster and more effective than a fancy, shaded, intricate icon with tiny little details. In my opinion, if you can't easily draw an icon on a piece of paper in a few minutes, it's not a very good icon- it's more of a picture or a drawing.

The human brain doesn't have any problem interpreting non-flat icons, as it doesn't have any problem with real world objects. We didn't have that problem you're saying before the flat design trend. Also icons should be aesthetically pleasing. When I see a iOS 6 homescreen, I see something beautiful. Can't say the same about iOS today.

And I'm going to stop here, because people are going to downvote the hell out of me. Design can be something very divisive.

What does “design can be something very divisive” tell you about “why do you need a citation, if you have two eyes” and the original quote that started this thread?

Corporate logos are a slightly different kettle of fish to icons. Logos need to be designed so that their shapes work anywhere - from a screen to a billboard to a letterhead. Application icons just need to look good on a screen.

> Your mind shouldn't have to interpret colors, light sources, shading, depth

You have the cart before the horse here. Your mind already does that. There are lots of perceptual tricks that designers can use to enhance their work, all due to the way the visual system works. Certainly an icon can be too busy, but sometimes adding those items makes things easier to digest. For example, consider a 'buy' button that's a flat, single colour, versus one that has a gradient that makes it 'pop out' from the screen a little.

> and when you see that color + typeface together anywhere you instantly recognize what brand it is for.

This (blue + simple, light shape) trend was taken to such extreme that nowadays I feel discomfort looking at the screen with FB, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, IFTTT, Dropbox, Skype etc.

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